“Just 19 percent of 15- to 17-year-olds had jobs in 2018, compared with almost half in 1968.” Shifts like this are “particularly troublesome for restaurants that have depended on young workers since the days of soda jerks and carhops.” Coupled with a tight employment market and increasing wages, restaurants will be “scrambling for cheap labor in 2019.”

It is shocking “that more than 65% of Japanese medical doctors who responded to a survey said reducing the entrance exam scores for women is unavoidable, since the extreme working hours make it impossible for female doctors to work full time while taking care of their children. Japanese society still sees household chores and childcare as the main responsibility of women, whether or not they are in paid employment.”

“European sceptics are being forced to acknowledge the recovery in a region that they have failed to understand politically, as the eurozone enjoys positive PMIs and employment figures while rejecting populist politics…. April saw the fifth largest allocation shift from US to European equities since the start of the eurozone in 1999.”

Focusing on employment and rising wages, Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen believes “the U.S. economy is in decent shape and would be even better if not for the blasted rest of the world.” Markets, on the other hand, “are looking at different signals that suggest the world economy continues to weaken.” For example, “global trade is no longer growing as rapidly as world GDP, which is the opposite of the historical pattern. Containers are piling up at the world’s ports.” Ms. Yellen may “turn out to be right” given market proclivity for volatility and overreaction.

“U.S. employers now have more job openings than ever previously recorded,” but there’s a catch. “The average time required to fill a job opening has also just reached an all-time high: 27.3 days, or almost a month,” and it’s over 2 months (64 days) at the biggest companies. Unfortunately, nobody’s sure of the reason behind this or the implications the lag may have for the employment picture or, indeed, the overall economy.” Knowing why might explain why salaries aren’t going up, when they might or if they will.

“The long-lasting oil price slump is reverberating through macroeconomic data points and this earnings season.” Oil and gas exploration companies are getting hammered. And “the impact of lower investment and employment in the energy sector was also reflected in disappointing first-quarter U.S. GDP data.”

“Modest growth has never been enough to overcome the damage of the Great Recession and, from there, to reach new levels in terms of output, employment and wages.” Unfortunately, the U.S. is still stuck with modest growth. “For all the talk about accelerating growth, the economy grew last year at a rate of 2.4 percent, basically in line with growth over the past several years.”

“Instead of changing a structure of employment that clearly does not work for women, Apple and Facebook are offering employees the chance to freeze their eggs and have children later.” Egg freezing and storage is the latest Silicon Valley perk designed “to attract more female employees” and “tackle the Gender Pay Gap.” But to some, this sounds surreal. “Women freeze the source of life itself? That’s not a perk, it’s an outrage.”

Upbeat U.S. employment figures belie the fact that full-time jobs actually fell by 523,000 in June. “Way too many adults now depend on the low-wage, part-time jobs that teenagers would normally fill. Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen had it right in March when she said: ‘The existence of such a large pool of partly unemployed workers is a sign that labor conditions are worse than indicated by the unemployment rate.’” Stripping the nearly 800,000 new part-time jobs out from the employment figures removes the feel-good factor and reveals “why the June numbers are so distressing.”

“Is the full-time American job going the way of the dodo? The signs aren’t exactly heartening.” Part-time work has been rising, working hours declining and low-wage work increasing as part of an ongoing, long-term trend. The use of temporary workers through staffing agencies has also increased. “Left to its own devices, the American economy is eroding the American job. Hours decline, dragging take-home pay down with them.”